Reading

Reading is so important and in Year 5 we want to encourage you to read a wide range of quality texts and to read as often as you can. We think it is so valuable to read to someone at home and we ask you to do this at least once a week.

Reading Records

You will be given a reading record. Every week we ask you to record a minimum of 3 comments about what you are reading - noting the title and author of the book, the pages you read and your comment. A comment can be written by you or by the person who listened to you read. Comments that you write should not be waffly and say things like 'I like this book' or 'I didn't like this book', instead they should pick out WOW words. This means great vocabulary such as phrases, similes, verbs, adjectives or nouns which you think are powerful and exciting and that you could magpie for your own writing. It could also be words or phrases that you didn't know the meaning of and you have looked it up in a dictionary and then recorded it in your reading record. Your reading record must be in school everyday for use during guided reading and it is handed in for checking every Wednesday.

Guided Reading

Guided Reading happens in class everyday, usually between 10:10 and 10:30am. Activities happen on a carousel of 5 groups - one day a week you will read in a small group with the teacher, studying a text and focusing on using your reading skills to answer comprehension questions. The other days you will be involved in a range of reading activities, including using your magpie books, studying topic books, developing your reading skills and preparing for your guided reading session often by reading a text.

Reading Comprehension

We focus on developing our six reading skills - decoder, comprehender, reading detective, language lover, responder and big reader. Each involves analysing a text in a different way, for example looking at the language an author chooses to use (language lover) or the clues they give about character (reading detective). The questions we ask about a text are always linked to these reading skills. When someone at home helps you with your reading, they might find the following document useful 'Developing reading skills through questionning.' It gives ideas about the sorts of questions to ask linked to each reading skill.

Reading

Reading

Visiting the Library

Once a week every class will visit the school library with their teacher. This is a time for you to change your books and take out new books. It is also a great opportunity to ask your teacher or the librarian, Mrs Benoist, about books they might recommend. We strongly encourage you to visit the library in your own time too, at breaktimes or lunchtimes, because we know you will be reading such a lot that you will want to change your books often!

If you are also lucky enough to be able to visit a library near to where you live, we would really recommend it. Mrs Benoist keeps a great collection of books in our school library but you will be able to get lots of different and exciting titles by going to another library as well.

Link Reading

In addition to the Hitingbury 100 list (for more about this see our Hiltingbury 100 page), in Year 5 we have link reading lists which relate to our English curriculum. In the Autumn term, the list relates to the genre of suspense and there are some fantastic titles to choose from. We urge you to read at least one title from this list, either independently or with someone at home, to support your learning in school. If you would like to read more, or all, of them, please do!